


Life

by heartsdesire456



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Deep Conversations, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 23:32:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5109545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartsdesire456/pseuds/heartsdesire456
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky was laying on the couch, flipping channels while Steve got dressed after his post-run shower, when Steve got the call.</p>
<p>He heard him answer his phone, which was nothing out of the ordinary, but when he heard Steve’s voice as he uttered a small, “Oh,” he knew something was wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life

**Author's Note:**

> Titles are the hardest thing in the history of life. Omg.

Bucky was laying on the couch, flipping channels while Steve got dressed after his post-run shower, when Steve got the call.

He heard him answer his phone, which was nothing out of the ordinary, but when he heard Steve’s voice as he uttered a small, “Oh,” he knew something was wrong. He sat up, gripping the back of the couch as he looked into the bedroom and saw Steve’s shoulders slump and his head hang forward. “Yeah. It’s been a long time coming, I guess. Yeah, you’re right. Thanks for telling me.” Steve nodded slightly and Bucky saw his hand shaking when he tugged at his shirt. “I’ll talk to you later, Sam,” he said before hanging up. Steve stood there for a minute, rolling the phone over and over in his hand, and Bucky couldn’t stay quiet any longer.

“Steve? Something wrong?” he called, and Steve turned to come to the bedroom doorway, stopping as he turned the phone over and over in his hands. “You okay?” Bucky asked carefully.

Steve sighed, nodding. “Yeah. It was Sam.” He looked up, meeting Bucky’s eyes with a sad little purse to his lips before he finally spoke. “Peggy died last night.”

Bucky’s heart sank. “Shit,” he said, and Steve nodded, looking back down at his phone. Bucky ran a hand through his hair, then patted the couch. “You okay?” he asked, and Steve made a face as he walked over and flopped down beside Bucky.

“I think so?” Steve said, not sounding too sure of himself. Bucky slung his arm around Steve’s shoulders, pulling him into his side and Steve continued after laying his head on Bucky’s shoulder. “It’s not exactly unexpected or anything. I mean, I’m pretty sure me and you are the only ninety year olds who aren’t in an old folks home,” he said with a weak smile, clearly trying to make a joke that he didn’t really feel.

Bucky cringed and tugged Steve to lay down with him, pulling Steve until he laid his head in the crook of Bucky’s neck and let Bucky hold him. “You ain’t gotta try and be tough with me, Punk,” he murmured, rubbing his back in soothing circles. “I know how much she meant to you.”

Peggy Carter had always been something of an awkward topic for them. It wasn’t that Steve had cheated on Bucky with her, because there was never anything between them before the war. Nothing concrete. They had never been more than just best friends. But _God_ they had come close so many times. When Bucky said goodbye to Steve before he left, he’d made a promise to himself that, if he survived the war, if he got home to Steve, he’d greet him with the kiss he had always wanted to give to him and confess every feeling he’d ever had for him. And going by the way Steve looked at him, he knew his confession would be welcome.

And then when he’d seen Steve again, in that factory, after Steve had been altered and enhanced by the serum, he’d decided then and there that, the second they were safe and alone, he was going to confess then and there, fuck waiting until the war was over.

Only before he ever got the chance, Peggy Carter walked her beautiful, badass self up to Steve and the second he saw Steve look at her he knew.

After that day, on top of all the things that he didn’t want to admit were changed about him after what they did to him in that factory, after seeing that he’d lost his chance to have the life he’d planned on with Steve, he almost took the option to go home after being a POW. It was only the thought of Steve going into _war_ without him there to keep him safe that kept him there. No matter how hurt he was, he knew Steve was always going to be his priority. So he stayed. He followed Steve into trouble the same way he always did. He had seen the way Peggy looked at Steve and heard Howard Stark tell him all about how she liked Steve before he was big and handsome, and Bucky had to admit, it was better for Steve to meet a great gal like Peggy Carter than be with him any day. No matter how much it hurt sometimes, and no matter how much he hated the guilt Steve showed when he saw Bucky watching, Bucky was happy for Steve. Because if he couldn’t have him, at least someone who deserved him could.

Peggy was smart, too. She saw just as much as Bucky did. While Peggy and Steve never got the chance to be much more than he and Bucky ever had – Before Bucky ‘died’, he knew they’d never even kissed – Peggy knew damn well what Bucky and Steve had once had between them. She never really said anything direct about it, and Bucky wasn’t ever sure how she felt about homosexuals anyways, but one night when they had all been working together and camped out in the forest, she and he had been the only ones left awake while the others all slept. They sat at the fire, sharing a bottle of bourbon, and when Peggy saw him looking over at where Steve was lying asleep, she had initiated the only conversation that ever came close to talking about him and Steve.

_He was still staring at Steve, sleeping peacefully with his bangs falling into his face, pink lips parted lightly, when Peggy spoke up. “He only ever got involved in the fighting because he had to save you, you know.” Bucky looked back quickly, startled by her voice._

_“What?” he asked, and she nodded to Steve, passing him back the bottle._

_“Steve.” She looked at the fire. “I hadn’t seen him in a few months until he got here and was performing. He was going to pack up and go with the show until he saw the ambulances returning and I told him that he’d just performed for what was left of your unit.” She shook her head. “He rushed to find out if you were safe, and when they said you were marked as lost and held prisoner, he didn’t even stop to think.” She chuckled. “He stole a pair of trousers from someone’s bunk since he was still wearing the Captain America outfit, grabbed one of the dancers helmets, and decided he’d walk all the way there if he had to, he was coming to get you.” She looked at Bucky knowingly. “He went after you for the same reason you’ve stayed instead of go home.”_

_Bucky didn’t say anything else and she never did either. They’d spent another long while sitting in silence and sharing the alcohol before Bucky had finally given up and gone to try and get some shuteye._

He and Peggy may not have ever been the best of friends, but they always got along, they always worked well together, and he always had great respect for her. Bucky smiled and chuckled. “Hey Steve. Remember that time we were all arguing over who should swim across that river in Austria to run the line for the rest of us to go across, and she got sick of us arguing and just stripped down to her underwear and jumped in and stood there, soaking wet and half-naked, and yelled a blue streak at us while we brought her clothes across to her?” he asked, and Steve laughed.

“Dum Dum kept looking at her boobs and she threatened to shoot him in the crotch,” Steve said and Bucky snickered into Steve’s hair.

“God she was something else,” Bucky said, and Steve made a soft hum against his chest. Bucky rubbed his back and kissed the top of his head.

Steve nuzzled closer. “It’s just so weird to think about that Peggy and the old woman she was when I came back. I’m glad she got to live a long, full life. It was just so hard to accept that the same girl who punched a Nazi in the face when she ran out of bullets and knocked him out in one hit was that old lady who couldn’t even get out of bed anymore.”

Bucky nodded. He’d never gone to see Peggy again. He didn’t really see the point in it. He knew she was in and out of lucidity at her age and he didn’t want to be the one thing to actually spur her into having a heart attack when he had nothing to say to her now that he’d never said to her before. They weren’t friends and he didn’t have a reason to thank her for taking care of Steve after he died since Steve went and died just a few weeks later. There was just nothing left to be said so he had let Steve visit her alone the few times he went. It was just more fitting. “It’s weird,” Bucky agreed. “It’s so weird to think everybody is either dead or too old to remember everything.”

After a moment of silence, Steve broke it with a brittle voice. “I really did love her back then, you know?”

Bucky closed his eyes, holding Steve closer, fighting the still lingering hint of pain he felt when he remembered what it was like to know just that. “I know you did, Punk,” he comforted.

“I mean,” Steve said quickly. “She was never you, don’t get me wrong, but I-“

Bucky shushed him. “Stevie, you ain’t ever gotta try and explain that to me.” He smiled sadly, pulling back far enough to look at Steve. “Very few people will ever live their whole life only lovin’ one person. If I got mad at you for lovin’ somebody besides me, in the goin’ on thirty-five years you’ve been living a life, I’d be an asshole.”

Steve gave him a stubborn frown. “Most people don’t love two people at one time,” he pointed out and Bucky shrugged.

“So? You ain’t most people,” Bucky countered. He pushed Steve’s hair out of his face with a smile. “Baby, I knew the second she walked up to you and you two flirted in the middle of that crowd that you loved her, and it broke my heart a little bit, but I still managed to be happy for you and her. She was a good person. If anybody deserved you, it was her, not me, and I knew it no matter how much it hurt to see you smilin’ at her like that.”

Steve groaned. “You’re not making it any easier when you say that it broke your heart, Bucky-“

“Hey, I’m just being honest,” Bucky said with a grin. “Obviously I didn’t pine to death. I accepted you and her were better for each other and went about my business. You knew I loved you, and you knew I knew you loved me back. Didn’t do anything to stop you and Peggy having a shot at a life you and I could’ve never had then.” He rubbed his side affectionately. “I was gonna go for it, too, which was dumb as shit. I had stupid thoughts so it’s probably for the best Peggy was there to love you and stop me from being stupid.”

Steve frowned. “Wait, what? What do you mean you were gonna go for it?” he asked.

Bucky had never told Steve about that, so he did now. “If I made it home from the war, I was going to kiss you and hold you and never let you go.” Steve’s eyes widened and Bucky shrugged. “I told myself the last night in New York with you that if I ever got to look at you again, I wasn’t gonna let anything stop me from pullin’ you into my arms,” He tightened his hold around Steve’s middle with a smile. “Lookin’ you in those big, blue eyes,” He reached up and stroked Steve’s cheek. “And tellin’ you that I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen years old and nothin’ else mattered. Not a damn thing.” He grinned at the blush on Steve’s cheeks. “God you’re cute,” he teased and Steve groaned, dropping his head to Bucky’s chest.

“Stoooop.”

“We’ve been together for months now and here you are, blushing over me saying I love you, like I don’t do it every single day!” He kissed Steve’s hairline and Steve sighed.

“That’s what you wanted to talk to me about after you saw medical that day, isn’t it? And you never bothered finding me in the end because you saw me and Peggy,” Steve said and Bucky nodded.

“Yeah. I knew it was better to just give it up. It was crazy to start with. We’d have never had any sort of life like that and I knew it,” Bucky admitted. “You could’ve gotten married, had kids, lived a long, full life with her. I couldn’t do any of that, all I could offer you was hiding away in a little apartment somewhere, constantly worrying that somebody was gonna see through our window and catch us and we’d end up in prison or worse. Loving you wasn’t worth stealing that future from you since it was an option,” he explained. “But I guess life didn’t turn out that way either,” he added and Steve chuckled.

“I had two versions of a future in my head once, and neither of them happened, and the one that did was so much worse,” he nearly whispered. “Either it was gonna be me and you until the end, New York streets under our feet until the end, best friends until I bit the dust – cause let’s face it, I wasn’t gonna live half as long as you as sickly as I was – and living our same old life, or I was gonna be with Peggy, live old and happy, have all the things I’d never even dreamt of before.” 

Bucky hummed, rubbing the space between Steve’s shoulder blades. “Instead, you watched me die, then you thought you were coming to join me, and then you woke up all alone and scared and without anybody in the whole goddamn world,” Bucky said, a tinge of bitterness that would never go away highlighted in his voice. “I don’t remember all the horrible shit they did to me most days, but I can picture vividly what it was like for you to be so alone in this world without a single person to give a fuck about you as more than a super soldier, and that? Shit, that upsets me more than all the shit I knew they did to me.” He hugged Steve close. “They could torture me all they want, and it would never be as bad as thinking about how much you needed me and I wasn’t there,” he whispered into Steve’s ear.

Steve gently pressed a kiss to Bucky’s neck, tightened his hold on Bucky’s shirt. “You’re here for me now, though. It’s all okay now. Nobody’s ever taking you from me again, that’s for damn sure.”

Bucky laughed and nodded. “I’d like to see them fuckin’ try.” He nuzzled Steve’s cheek, making Steve turn and peck his lips with a soft hum. Bucky smiled when Steve lifted his head and met his eyes. There was still sadness in his eyes and Bucky pressed a kiss to his nose. “Peggy Carter was the only person I would’ve ever trusted to take care of you, you know?” he said and Steve smiled, eyes a little wet, and nodded.

“I think in the end, she probably got the better deal without me,” Steve added in a soft tone and Bucky chuckled.

“Yeah, probably. In the middle of a war, she never got the time to learn exactly how much of a punk you are,” Bucky joked and Steve grinned up at him.

“You’re still such a jerk,” he accused and Bucky winked when pulled Steve’s face back into his neck, rubbing his back as he cuddled him close again, fully content to spend the next hour or so just giving Steve whatever strength he needed. He smiled, laying his cheek against Steve’s head, before he answered him.

“Only for you, Baby.”


End file.
